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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Last of the Beanie Baby Series

So I think this is a Cuckoo bird .. but I know it's Number 9 in my Beanie Baby Painting series. Last one. I may touch it up tomorrow a bit. For now, this is it.

I only had a short time to paint today, since my Still Life class was this morning and I needed to get my thoughts together for a talk I'm giving tomorrow at the Rotary Club of Reston about my 100 Faces in 100 Days Project. (Plus I needed to clean out a ... part ... of my car. It's been loaded to the gills forever. I should say ... I need to muck it out. It's that bad.)

I knew that all I could attempt is a little guy ... as much as I also wanted to finish my still life with the Carousel horse. It's pretty wonderful to be choosing between all of these things I'm dying to do. How can I go wrong?

Today's class was great today although I was missing a few of this very nice group. One of my still life students is a thirteen-year-old who signed up at the last minute. He's never painted in oils before and today was his second day in front of the canvas. His mom came to pick him up ... looked at his painting ... and I believe, her jaw dropped. She told me that it's his first oil painting ... and I told her to keep that a secret. What's amazing to me, with him and my other students, is how carefully they listen and how hard they work to apply the lessons. To say it's rewarding is a HUGE understatement.

A couple of times I sat down on the window's ledge and look around the room. From that vantage point, I could really see the successes ... of Barbara's bottle and Cormac's pear ... or from another angle the three-dimensionality of Anne's leaves. At the easel, you don't always know what you've achieved. From across the room, those paintings are little miracles.

Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Avenue, NYC, Nov. 1-11
To read more about the 100 Faces in 100 Days project on my web site (www.jillbanks.com), go to the 100 Faces Project Pages 1 and 2 where you can see all 100 of my volunteers. Click on the paintings, and go to my blog post for that person's sitting.